Cristiano Ronaldo’s Manchester criticism echoed by Al Hilal’s new Riyadh centre

Cristiano Ronaldo’s long-standing criticism of Manchester United’s facilities has been brought back into focus after Al Hilal opened a 56,000-square-metre training complex in Riyadh featuring advanced sports science and recovery equipment.

The Portugal forward, now captain of Al Nassr, made headlines in November 2022 when he gave a high-profile interview to broadcaster Piers Morgan. During the conversation, Ronaldo strongly criticised Manchester United, the club he was playing for at the time, and the dispute ended with his contract being terminated.

One of the issues that angered Ronaldo most was what he regarded as the poor condition of Manchester United’s facilities. He subsequently left the Premier League and began a new chapter in Saudi Arabia with Al Nassr.

Three and a half years after that move, Ronaldo has seen the type of infrastructure he had been seeking at Manchester United unveiled by Al Hilal, one of his club’s main rivals in Saudi football.

Al Hilal held an official ceremony on Friday to open its new first-team training headquarters, named the Al Majdiah Sports Centre, at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University in Riyadh.

The Saudi club said the centre had been developed to strengthen its infrastructure and create a fully professional environment capable of improving player performance. It added that the facilities were designed to reflect leading international practices in athlete preparation and recovery.

The complex covers more than 56,000 square metres and includes two grass pitches, an integrated sports performance centre and specialist recovery facilities.

It also contains a medical clinic, meeting and lecture rooms, and a range of support areas intended to meet the first team’s technical, physical and medical requirements. The site includes a hotel camp, an administrative headquarters and a media centre.

Images released by Al Hilal showed a mural displaying every major honour won by the first team throughout the club’s history. Another mural featured photographs from those celebrations, while the centre also includes a swimming pool and a fitness gym.

Al Hilal said several technologies being introduced at the facility had not previously been used by football clubs in Saudi Arabia. These include a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, an anti-gravity treadmill, a traditional sauna fitted with Himalayan salt and red-light recovery equipment.

The centre also features a hypoxic training room, allowing staff to reproduce different altitudes and climatic conditions by adjusting oxygen levels, temperature and humidity. That will enable the team to carry out training programmes designed to replicate a variety of environments and weather conditions.

Al Hilal’s first team will use the complex for the first time on Friday, in their opening training session in Riyadh since returning from an overseas camp in Austria.

The club will begin the new season next Friday when it face Al-Faisaly in the opening round of the Roshn Saudi League.